Is YouTube Red the New Podcast App?

Recently I have been using YouTube Red more and more and using iTunes less and less and this got me thinking. Is YouTube Red the new Podcast App? Let me explain

YouTube Red is a monthly service for $9.99 a month offering

Ad-free videos

Uninterrupted music

YouTube Red Originals

Download videos to watch offline

Background play

I am not a fan of YouTube Red Originals and Google Music is an ok service but the other two features Download videos to watch offline and Background play got me thinking about future of Podcasting.

Background play lets you turn off the screen of your phone and the video still plays. Watching offline video is downloading a video so that’s basically like downloading a podcast mp3.

So if you want to listen to a podcast, for example, The Tech Guy. All you need to do is download the video start playing it and turn off the screen of your phone all from inside the YouTube App.

Any and all of the popular podcast productions have YouTube channels and many podcasts are even adding a video element. What this means for podcasters is that adding a video element to your podcast is going to get more important.

If you want to add say you’re audio to YouTube there are free services out there for this like TunesToTube and many others. With podcasting, you really don’t know how users are going to listen and since YouTube Red is aimed at users on the go who like YouTube I think you are going to see more podcasters focusing on video to try to capture some of the YouTubers very large user base that spends time watching videos.

There are around 1.5 million subscribers to YouTube Red and almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day. So it’s an important platform for any podcaster trying to capture an audience it’s just as important as iTunes. Even if listeners are not YouTube Red Subscribers they could still listen to your podcast in the car with the screen on.